Data recovery recommendations

My 2007 iMac finally but the dust...with nearly ten years (my child's entire life) of photos. Have had two IT friends monkey with the drive, both concluding that forensic recovery is best option.

Does anyone have a ballpark cost for this, and guesses about whether that cost is likely to fall if I hold onto the drive for a couple of years? We don't have a thousand bucks for data retrieval at the moment.

My 2007 iMac finally but the dust...with nearly ten years (my child's entire life) of photos. Have had two IT friends monkey with the drive, both concluding that forensic recovery is best option.

Does anyone have a ballpark cost for this, and guesses about whether that cost is likely to fall if I hold onto the drive for a couple of years? We don't have a thousand bucks for data retrieval at the moment.

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It depends on what is wrong with the hard drive but seems to be around the $250 mark.

Hanging onto it just means it's more likely the data will be corrupted over time the quicker you do it the more chance they have to recover it all.

Of course the takeaway lesson is to always have a backup of your data, external drives are cheap and easy to use and bring great peice of mind.

If the internal hard drive has a -hardware- failure, forensic data recovery may be the only way to get the files from the platters, but be advised that this is a VERY expensive service -- expect to pay $750-1,000. Perhaps even more.
However, if you use such services, you only pay "the big bucks" IF they are successful in pulling the data out.

If the hard drive has had a -software- failure (usually corrupted directory or perhaps corruption in the system software that prevents it from booting), you may be able to recover the files yourself with a small cash outlay (for another drive).

The 2007 iMac has a firewire port.
Have you tried connecting it to another Mac by using firewire target disk mode?
What kind of results do you see?
If you get an error message, what is it?

Hello. If your iMac can't open, you can use other Mac to connect with your iMac. I know i from a friend, he use a macbook to connect with the old one. Then use a third-party data recovery program to recover his lost file. I don't know whether or not this solution can use in your iMac 2007, but it is worth trying.
Remember always sync your important files to other place, like iCloud or other network disc.

A buddy had his iMac hard drive fail with over 4 years of photos lost. A data recovery firm could not get the info from the drive. He called to see if I could help as his wife was very upset. I was able to remove the drive, hook it up as an external drive and use data recovery software to get his files transferred to another drive. About 200GB of data.

The problem was the drive would overheat and shut down within minutes of any big data transfer. The data recovery firm just tried to transfer / recover the data "in bulk" and it always failed as the drive would overheat.

I plugged the drive into my iMac and opened my office window (it was winter and cold outside). I also had a small fan about 6 inches from the hard drive and blowing air on it at high speed to help keep it cool. I would just transfer a few GB of data and then let the drive sit for a minute to cool down. If I tried to transfer too much at once, the drive would still overheat.

This took several hours, but saved all their photos and some other files from their computer.

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